Runners: Win $500
“Runner in Red”
Story Competition
Get a FREE Ebook to read the story
Submit an essay to win $500
Details below!
“Runner in Red”
Story Competition
Details below!
“Runner in Red,” is a Boston Marathon mystery novel, love story and Irish family drama based on a real-life legend. The story provides a window into the history of women’s running as it follows a female TV reporter and former Red Sox ballplayer on a search for the first women to run a marathon in America.
Thanks to sponsors, we’re offering “Runner in Red” Ebooks FREE to the first 50 who register. We invite you to read the novel, then submit a short essay (300 words) to be eligible to win a $500 cash prize. Answer this question:
Identify resiliency lessons from the story of the pioneers of women’s running featured in the novel “Runner in Red” and tell how you can apply the courage, determination and grit of the characters in the story (real-life and fictional) to your running and your life.
• $500 cash prize for the winning essay.
Competition is open to men and women.
Get a FREE Ebook today to read the story, submit an essay by April 15, 2026.
Winner of the $500 will be announced April 20, 2026 (Boston Marathon day)
Register here!
If you’re one of the first fifty to register, we’ll send you a link to download a FREE Ebook of the Boston Marathon novel, “Runner in Red.” The book supports a cure for lung cancer. If you’d like to purchase a copy, the paperback and audiobook are available on Amazon.
Join in! Read the novel, help create awareness for our cure lung cancer campaign – and share your resiliency story.
Upload your essay (below.) Preference is for Word doc, but you can upload Pdf as well.
Reviews and Testimonials
Runner in Red moves faster than a speeding bullet through the streets of Boston, capturing the essence of an old myth and excitement of a new empowering story of women, passion, courage, and heart.
Kathrine Switzer, first registered woman runner of the Boston Marathon in 1967 and ran it 50 years later, in 2017. Founder, 261 Fearless, which empowers women through running
(261fearless. org)
…an entertaining, fast-paced, mystery thriller weaving real-life characters and historically accurate events into a scintillating tale… This novel is a must read for all fans of running.
Jack Fultz, winner of the 1976 Boston Marathon and trainer for the Dana Faber charity running programs
Tom Murphy’s Runner in Red is an incredible story with so much local color and facts one could almost believe his book may be more fact than fiction.
Gloria G. Ratti, Vice President Boston Athletic Association
This is a magical story!
Uta Pippig, Three time Boston Marathon women’s champion
Whatever it takes to run a marathon, women have ‘It’ in abundance. The mystery of course is why it took so long to give them an opportunity. Runner in Red is about running, but it’s about so much more—life, relationships, resiliency.
Bob Hodge, third place finisher Boston, 1979, and winner of Beppu Marathon, Japan, 1982
People are going to love this story
Bill Rodgers, four time winner of the Boston and New York City Marathon.
Explore
Read more about the story behind Runner in Red
INTRO
An Introduction to Runner in Red
…It was an on-the-cuff comment by one of Jock’s patients that triggered my long-standing interest in a “what if” that has led to this story that follows. The fellow on the rubdown table asked Jock if he would have chased the “Runner in Red” in 1951, and Jock responded with a throw-away line, “If she woulda been real, I would have protected the rules.” “If she woulda been real,” caught my attention and sent me to the Boston Public Library to research the “Runner in Red.” I learned that the legend was real…
FIRST THREE CHAPTERS
Read an Excerpt
…The camera cut to First Avenue and Ellen became visible suddenly, 50 yards behind the women leaders, as they made their way up the boulevard. She was unmistakable in her red top and blonde ponytail, and she was moving fast, eating up large quantities of real estate that separated her from the four in the lead. …The roar of the million-plus crowd, thickest on the East Side, offered a thunderclap for the first women, which included Ellen now, who continued to inch closer….
About the Author
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Tom Murphy—a life-long runner—taught in Boston schools where he quickly fell in with the road running crowd. With John J. Kelley, the 1957 Boston Marathon winner, Tom wrote Just Call Me Jock in 1982, a history of the Boston Marathon as seen through the eyes of Jock Semple, the colorful race co-director. Tom’s novel, Runner in Red, is a fictional search for the ‘runner wearing red” in 1951 but it is also a love story, moving family drama and life-affirming celebration of the human spirit. In 2006, Tom wrote a book about the aviation heroes on 9/11, called Reclaiming the Sky, which led the president of Fordham University to invite Tom to create an institute, the Human Resiliency Institute, to put healing lessons from the book into programs. The institute’s lead program, (Resiliency) Edge4Vets, teaches vets how to tap their strengths to get jobs. See more at edge4vets.org. Tom also created a beer, called Barb’s Beer, which works in collaboration with the Bonnie Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and enlists partner restaurants to serve the beer and support GRACE (cancerGRACE.org,) a charity founded by Barb Murphy’s oncologist, Dr. Howard West, one of America’s leading experts working to cure lung cancer. See barbsbeer.org for details.
